Party Time!

At Grant's buddy Dylan's birthday party, sliding was a family affair:
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My Sweet Arts

Migi joined us for our My Sweet Arts class:
 

 

Grant prefers a more literal interpretation of the "swimming" action ...(and he swam right out of his pants twice during this song)
 

 

 

Painting jellyfish:
 

Fun with light sticks

 

 

 

 

Loving on Djangs

Nothing like boys and their dog.  Django puts up with this because Hayes feeds him. a. lot.
 

Happy (first) Fourth of 2012!

We've already started celebrating Independence Day this year, and Grant was so excited to play (and eat cupcakes) with two of his best buddies at a lovely party!
 

 

 

 

 

Little Firemen

One of Grant's buddies from school had his birthday party at the local fire house:
 

 

 

Defying Gravity

We have a new favorite place in town--an indoor trampoline center called "Defy Gravity":
 

 

Still got it!
 

 

First and Last Sensory Bin

Bloggers are always posting about these lovely, creative "sensory bins" that they make for their children to explore.  Rice dyed blue with sea shells and animal figures...aquarium gravel with zoo animals...lima beans with ferns and dinosaurs.  I've skeptically admired them from afar, until today.  I finally decided to throw caution to the wind, dump a couple of partially used bags of dry beans into the water table with some fun scooping tools, and invite my children to use their senses to explore and enjoy their magical bean world in an unguided fashion (because that's what all of the blogs claim you do with these bins, and they make it sound really impressive.)

But here's how it really went down (there was no time for 'before' pictures, this happened fast):

It took half an hour to clean up all of the beans (Did you know that it's pretty much impossible for me to sweep up beans faster than Hayes can unsweep them? Now imagine the same scenario, but with Grant insisting on being the sweeper.  And it's 90+ degrees out.)

It's safe to say that you will never see a sensory bin from me popping up on pinterest.  (Such a wordy blog post from me, but I'm planning to re-read this the next time I see one of those cute sensory bins and think about trying to re-create it for my little tornadoes.) 

More Swimming!

Our lives have revolved around swim lessons the past week and a half, so here are more pictures!  (I brought my massive zoom lens, so I don't have to get close and distract Grant, plus it's easier to keep Hayes away from the water.  Bonus: I look like crazy paparazzi mom with that beast.  To support my paparazzi claim, I've included the first picture, which I think totally looks like something you'd see in a celebrity magazine if Grant and Suri Cruise started dating.)

 

 

After every class, Hayes insists on being wrapped up in a towel when Grant gets wrapped up.  (Seriously, he runs over to the pool bag and digs in it until he finds a towel, which he then throws at me while trying to take his shirt off.)
 

Last Day at the Lodge!

Aside from the few minutes I brought the camera to the pool, we didn't take a whole lot of pictures for the weekend since we were usually quite wet.  On our last morning, we went for some group shots, but I couldn't figure out my timer, so we mixed it around:
 

 

 

And then on our way out, I snagged a lady in the parking lot and we finally got our full group photo:
 

And this is what the boys looked like for most of the drive home: